Busted!
by ValaMalDoran-Jackson
Summary: The good O'Neill gets a touch of the devil...


Seventeen year old Ella O'Neill slipped off her shoes and eased open the door from the garage to the rest of the house, listening for any sound that might give away an unwanted family meeting. Five hours late for her curfew, she was sneaking home after a wild night of drinking with her friends, hoping to avoid a standoff with her parents.

Navigating the darkened hallway, she smirked to think that she had been trained by the best in evading capture and was now utilizing those skills to sneak back inside the family home. Rounding the final corner, she started up the stairs.

A flashlight flared to life in front of her, illuminating the face of her fourteen year old little brother sitting above her on the stairs. Without a word, he made a great show of checking his watch before looking at her. "Five hours late. Dad would kill me if I kept this from him and Mom." he smiled wolfishly, then made as if to stand up.

"I'll clean your room for a week, do all your chores, and walk the dogs on your nights, if you swear not to say anything." Ella blurted quickly.

"You suck at cleaning my room. Clean the kitchen on my night, walk the dogs every night for a week, throw a fifty my way, and I'll forget that you came in late." He was definitely his father's son.

"Deal." Ella knew she was going to regret it later, but with the alcohol pickling her brain, she didn't really care.

"Hand over the fifty, and I don't start yelling." CJ ordered, holding out his hand. Ella silently fished her wallet out of her back pocket and handed it to him, then stepped past him and continued on up the stairs. At the second floor, she was suddenly flooded with light.

"Only five hours late. I'm impressed. I didn't even hear you come in, Ella." Samantha Carter-O'Neill snapped coolly.

"Shoulda' told you they were already awake, huh? My bad." CJ scampered past her with a smile that set her teeth on edge. He was so getting a snake in his bed later.

"Not only that, you tried to bribe your brother to keep quiet about the lateness of the hour. That's a month grounded right there. Not to mention the fact that you didn't call to let us know you'd be late, and is that alcohol on your breath?" Sam asked incredulously.

"You're the good one, you've got to set an example for your brothers, how to act, how to behave with decorum, how not to screw up!" Jack continued. Ella nodded waving a hand to move the conversation along. "Can we just set a time that I'm grounded for, and let me get some rest? I'd love that." she managed. "And it's moonshine, not alcohol. Lindsey's dad makes it in their basement, her parents left for the night so she threw a party. She didn't tell me they'd be gone, or that there was a party, or that she'd be allowing underage drinking. I mainly drank to look good. She kept asking if I was enjoying myself, and she'd refill my glass. I couldn't say no." She tried to explain.

"Course not. Everyone staring at you, waiting for you to be the smart one, waiting for you to be the first one to stand up for yourself?. You could have turned around and left when you realized what was going on, you could have said no to getting drunk. Sometimes, people give in to peer pressure when what they really want is for someone else to give them a reason to say no. You're telling me that not one of those kids said no when offered alcohol?" Jack asked.

"Nobody said no, but I don't think a lot of them wanted to drink or mess around." Ella replied.

"So why not give them an out? Be the one person that people can look to and use as a moral center. Your father and I-"

"No offense Mom, but you two aren't exactly paragons of virtue yourselves. You got drunk and climbed up on a table off world and gave everyone a stripdance before you were married, or don't you remember that one? And dad, remember the armband incident? O'Malley's? You sent three guys to the hospital with concussions! Should I even bother to mention the incident with Hathor, Mom, when you and Janet had to work your captors because they were libidinous? And you dare to lecture me about responsibility?"

"In my defense, I wasn't drunk that particular time at O'Malley's. I only jumped in to stop Daniel from taking a pounding."

"I'm entitled to a little freedom. This is the first time in seventeen years that I've screwed up, cut me some slack!" Ella exclaimed.

"You want slack? Okay. How's this for slack? For the next three months, you turn over your car keys, your cell phone, telephone, pager, blackberry, backup cell phone, emergency cell phone, credit cards, debit cards, computers, and any type of gaming device in your room. You will have no life outside of this house. You get off school, you hit up your mother or myself to take you home. If you can't get us to drop whatever important thing we are busy with, you pick a parent and sit in the room with us. You will finish your homework on time and, yes, Daniel and two others of your teachers have told us that your grades dipped. You will bring the grades up, or you forfeit another three months of your free time. Any questions?" Sam asked.

"Why are you being so hard on me? All I did was have a few drinks and hang with a few friends. Not like I made out with a Go'auld and promised to be his queen or anything. Really, you should be grateful I didn't do anything worse." Ella grumbled.

"Add another month for taking a tone with your mother, want to make it longer? Keep talking to her like you just did." Jack snapped, his voice snapping harshly. Ella sighed and waited for the conversation to continue.

"I can't believe this. You, drunk. Something I'd expect from Vala, maybe, but not you. I can't believe how much trust your father and I had in you. Have you ever been drunk before? Tell me you didn't drive home like this, please tell me you were at least responsible about that much." Sam begged.

"No, I was kinda' tired when I went out to the car, so I called a cab to bring me home. I didn't feel safe driving while feeling so weird, anyway. Lindsey said it was just a buzz, that I was being stupid, I could drive home, but I didn't want to."

"You're no longer friends with Lindsey. Consider her deleted from you life, as surely as I would have your mom delete an address from the dialing computer. Oh, and you can be sure that I'll be sending her parents a nice thank you email, for throwing the party. Maybe say something about how it's illegal to have underage drinking in their home. I will tell you this much, I am very disappointed in you right now." Jack snapped.

"Go to bed, we'll talk more about this in the morning." Sam sighed after a moment.

Ella nodded, took a step up to the landing…

…and collapsed at her parent's feet.

"Sweet! This is _soo _going on my Facebook account!" CJ exploded from the railing, having filmed the entire episode.

"CJ." Sam held out her hand and waited.

"You did say that Ella's life was destined for cameras. I'm just upholding that destiny you yourself have-"

Sam snapped her fingers impatiently, CJ placed the tape in her hand.

"I get it back at the end of her grounding, right?" He asked hopefully.

"Only if she gets the footage of you running around the house with a diaper on your head while screaming out that you were the king of diaper land from your last birthday." Jack compromised, motioning his son to his own room. Lifting his unconscious daughter, Jack carried her to her room and placed her gently on the bed before heading back to bed. "So, what's on the agenda for tomorrow? Waking her up by banging pots and pans together over her head? Yelling at her for hours?" He asked with a grin.

"Jack, you're thinking like a child. Again. Why must I always be the responsible parent? Airhorns don't require us to work out at all, yet torture her endlessly. We still have the three from last week's football game that we never used." Sam nudged him with her elbow.

"Beauty and brains, amazing. I got the perfect woman." Jack teased.


End file.
